The most important YouTube ranking factors are explained below in two categories. Working on them will surely help you in achieving success on YouTube as a video publisher.

YouTube SEO Rankings Factors Tips

Category 1 : Content (What You Control)

YouTube Video Title

You’ll want to have a high click through rate by creating a title that is awesome. You’ll need to do your keyword research accordingly to understand what the users want and need and are searching for. You’ll want the video to follow through on your title, you don’t want to be misleading or else it could negatively affect your rankings.

YouTube Video Description

Create a unique description that explains the points of the video. 1 word URL dropping descriptions do not get the job done. You need to monetize off of each opportunity and your 2nd opportunity that you control is the description of the video. Don’t let it go to waste. You can talk about what makes your video stand out, unique, or different. Remember, the actualy purpose of the description is A Description Of Your Video!

YouTube Video Tags

Create at least 5 tags. You will have these tags be exact match of the keywords you would like to get ranked for. Again, this must also coincide with what your video description says and what the video is about. Title > Description > Tags (include keywords in your description as well i.e. tags)

YouTube Transcription

What the heck is “transcription”? If you don’t already know what this is, I am going to go ahrad and explain this one for you. It’s a Gem! While the actual transcription sucks and will chop up your verbiage 90% of the time, it’s the transcription that Google will decide to use to get your video ranked for your targeted keywords.

YouTube Publisher Authority

Why is this under the category “content”? Because this is something you can control, and that is what we are referring to in category 1. Creating something that Google will see as an authority is a priority you should make for your channel. This comes with consistency. Authority in Google’s eyes is engagement throughout your spread of videos on your channel. Consistency is key. Don’t’ slack off and it’ll get easier and easier to rank for your terms in Youtube.

Quality Delivery

Quality delivery is in other words “not creating a crappy video that adds little to no value to the end user”. That is Henry’s definition he uses when discussing with clients from his Dallas SEO Company.

Get More Views

Get More QUALITY Views

Google can track how long people watched the video, when and where they dropped off, and where they went afterwards. Often times you delivered your point, point is received, user gets bored, user escapes the rest of the video. Watching a video all the way through is engagement, watching a video for 20 seconds of a 120 second video is no bueno. Not good for engagement. Just shorted your video down to 20 – 22 seconds if that is the case. Alternatively you can re-upload the video and make it engaging throughout the whole video.

Inbound Link Building (aka SEO Link Building)

You want to get links from other youtube channels, other websites, other related niche websites and any website that is relevant to your own and have them link back to you! Google will look for channel links and links to your video itself.

YouTube Video Comments and Responses

Ok, this is Key. If someone does comment and respond to your video you MUST reach out to them. Google wants to rank videos that build a following, the more followers you get the more followers they get, the more money Google make. Google is a business after all.

Second, video responses. Get someone to create another video in response to your video. WOW! What? This is one of the hardest ranking factors to signal. It’s also one of the most powerful. This “video response” topic requires a whole post in itself. For now I will leave you with this, incentivize. Give them a reason to react and share your content through their channel.

YouTube Video Likes and Favorites

Get your visitors to like your video and add both you, your channel, and your video to their favorites. This is a fluctuating ranking factor, but keep the numbers steady and Google will reward you for your efforts. The bottom line is this, if you take anything out of this article you can take this to the bank. The more the community interacts with your videos the higher they will rank, hopefully we explained that valiantly in the above text.